Tag Archives: kids

life as lab

Posted on by KatYa

As a kid  I witnessed attributes and played with them.

What would happen when I misbehaved?

life as laboratory I tried lying and

got caught. tried being super

nice to people I don’t know

I tried bullying (after I myself was bullied)

I tried kissing my friends (without their consent)

I tried doing chores without being asked

not doing chores

fighting with fists

reading a book from beginning to end

without stopping

writing a book (age eleven)

If an adult caught me experimenting this way

I risked being earmarked based on my behavior.

This was called judgment and came very easy to them.

I tried it…

I learned not to trust adults

very well

family

Posted on by KatYa

when you cannot see your family very often, and you see them, in flesh and blood, and get to embrace them, and hug the little ones and ruffle their hair, and look into those innocent eyes, and listen to them tell you stories, and tell them yours, in turn… nothing else compares, no, nothing else compares.

1984.kids

Posted on by KatYa

July came along and nobody knew our names
the fireworks were popping
no one could see them
they peppered our ears

we checked the sky
the powder had ignited
the oxygen burned
the paper falling to ground

after dark
we saw the snakes flying
umbrellas of light
the stars draped by the tails

slowly we recognized
who we were
motionless
cars and voices
and our names being called
in the night

cars and voices and our names
being called

motionless
in the night

our names
being called

– KatYa, 2017

the opening is tbd…

Posted on by KatYa

byo latchkey

we were…

latchkey kids. made deaf beneath

the wall of sound

of the industry

of the landscape
in the head
we played arcade games
to recover and chewed bubble
gum and drew on ourselves
with ballpoint pens
dumb kids. not stupid just
contextually thin

lacking or without sense or

the means to make
sense

hungry for relevance
starved of context

ignorant of our rights
we no longer studied our
country’s constitution
in high school
we microwaved tv dinners
and rode our bikes into the
night with duran duran baking
our heads by transistor
radio
stressed kids. the trance-like induction
of environmental stressors fill
the internal auditorium
teeming life of feelings acid-washed
a sensitive study of self
unreleased
abbreviated from an lp to an ep
the world stops when the record store is closed
the opening is tbd
you are all invited
statistics will be gathered
and fall upon us
with friends
new cokes slim jims leg warmers
byo latchkey

not getting it ness

Posted on by KatYa

I fell into my own fantasy as a keeper of the flame for the children new to fresh books books books. Even fantasies have antagonists and she was a beast, she related well to the kids what with her smiles and false promises. They wanted what she did not have, and fresh matte finish covers became less attractive as the eyes tend to follow the shiny dangler. So what? An asshole relates quite well to other orifices, I imagine, and cannot recuse themselves from toxic flushing, outlyers from anywhere life might thrive. I could only bring a few around to the treasures of reading, but we could proliferate from there. You know, kids tell other kids about a book and soon everyone is reading it. That was the best aspect of my fantasy. Funny how it used to be a reality, back in the Harry Potter days, the Chronicles of Narnia Days. These children were born with google roadmaps of life, and Marvel movies where once we had comic books. Maybe if I pulled the old trading card trick and attached sticks of bubble gum to the spine. Anything to greet them with language and keep them from falling into her world, the common unconscious of not getting-it-ness. Fighting for space. Craving intimacy. Technologically sound. Animals equipped with smart phones doing three quarters their mental work for them. Grades by emojis and trading in texts, subjugated to a subhuman comment thread without end. I don’t even consider her subjects of the same genus as we. I just see elephant seals fumbling about for dying, flopping fish. Mammals with computers and electric outlets. Mall grubbing video grabbers. Android celluloid.

chalk it off

Posted on by KatYa

chalk it off as existential slowburn -ii

… i dont know how to write this. i want to think before i write, but i cannot. i want to treat this
with the attention it requires. the gravity it inspires. the sensitivity it needs. i am even now
holding back from trying to rush to disagree with you on some of your points you made,
because i do feel differently, yes, and thats okay, yes. however, i cannot disagree with your
overall vision. because this is also what i see. atleast i think our visions of us are pretty
much alike. it doesnt matter if they are or they aren’t, though. i truly believe that.

god i feel like im in church all of a sudden. because my spirit is aching. i feel my spirit through
my body in that powerful way like i did on the best sundays in the earliest 1980s, when my family
was a young family, the 4 of us were tight, we had a big old queene anne victorian to tear around
in, a big old lawn wrapping around her, and a little peke-a-poo dog named buttons. its fur was like
the worst case of jerry curls when she was just a pup. my moms radiant joyfulness at having
all of us together singing hymns on sunday, well, it just filled us up, also. but my dad wasnt
really into it. so the kids werent either. so looking back its an aching kind of spirit i felt …